


No-Fail Chicken Soup

by MyOwnSuperintendent



Series: A Different Place [2]
Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Cancer Arc, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-15
Updated: 2018-10-15
Packaged: 2019-08-02 17:13:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16309343
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MyOwnSuperintendent/pseuds/MyOwnSuperintendent
Summary: Samantha just wants to help Scully, but it's not as easy as she hopes.





	No-Fail Chicken Soup

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place in the middle of "A Different Place"--after most of the fic, but before the "Sixteen Months Later" section.
> 
> I don't own The X-Files or anything related to it. Hope you enjoy!

When Mom or Fox can’t pick her up right away after school, Samantha waits in the library.  They didn’t want to let her go there by herself at first; it was because of the other Samantha, she knew.  But they went to the library so many times together and got to know the librarians, so now they let her go, if she makes sure she sits at the same table in the reading room and knows how to call them if anything happens.  So far nothing has.  Besides, it only takes two minutes to walk there from her school, and she doesn’t think anything at the library could be very dangerous.  It’s her favorite place, or one of them, because there are so many books. 

Today, she gets _A Ring of Endless Light_ ; she’s reading all of Madeleine L’Engle’s books, now that she knows she wrote more than one, although _A Wrinkle in Time_ is still her favorite so far.  Then she goes over to look at the cookbooks, which are her other favorites.  She cooks a lot now, and Mom and Fox let her use the sharp knives unsupervised, after she explained that she’s been using them all her life.  They gave her a couple of cookbooks of her own, back in December, but she always likes to look for new ones when she’s at the library.  She finds one called _The Comfort Cookbook_ , which she thinks is a nice name, and takes it over to the table with her to look through. 

The recipes in _The Comfort Cookbook_ are mostly easy things: mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese.  But one recipe catches her eye, because the name is interesting: No-Fail Chicken Soup.  There’s a paragraph under the name, so she decides to read that, hoping it will explain what makes the soup no-fail.  There are some big words, but she sounds them out carefully, like her tutor showed her. 

 _This recipe has been in my family for generations_ , the paragraph says, _and with good reason.  There couldn’t be anything more straightforward or more delightful; with just a little care and attention, and the simplest ingredients, you can make a soup that cures whatever ails you.  No matter how sick you’re feeling, in body or spirit, this soup can’t fail to make you feel better.  So grab a ladle and get to cooking!_

Impressed, Samantha tears a strip of paper out of her notebook, neatly, and puts it in _The Comfort Cookbook_ to mark the page.  She hadn’t known that soup could do all that, but this one must be able to, at least.  Cookbooks aren’t like Madeleine L’Engle, after all; they’re in the nonfiction section.  So everything in them is true. 

She’s put _The Comfort Cookbook_ aside and is reading the first chapter of _A Ring of Endless Light_ when she feels a tap on her shoulder.  She turns around; it’s Fox.  She was expecting Mom to pick her up, but she’s happy to see him too.  “I thought you weren’t coming back until tonight,” she says, quietly, because they’re in the library.

“We got through early,” he says.  He seems a little distracted, even as he nods at her book.  “What are the Murrys up to this time?”

“This one’s about the Austins,” she tells him. 

“Ah,” he says.  “Are you ready to go?”

She nods.  “As soon as I take these out.”

She says hi to the librarian, who checks out _A Ring of Endless Light_ and _The Comfort Cookbook_ and gives them to Samantha to put in her backpack.  Then they walk out to the parking lot.

When they get to the car, Samantha sees that Dana’s there, sitting in the passenger seat.  Her cheek is against the window.  “Hi, Dana,” Samantha says, as she gets into the backseat.

“Hi, Samantha,” Dana says, turning her head for a minute and then putting her cheek back against the window.  She looks really tired.

“Are you coming over for dinner?” Samantha asks.  “I got a new cookbook.”

“Not tonight,” Dana says.  Her voice is soft.  “Sorry, Samantha.  It’s been kind of a long day.”  Samantha doesn’t understand that.  It’s not even four yet.

Maybe Fox sees that she’s confused; he adds, “We’ve been doing a lot of work on this case, Sam.  So we’re just going to drop Scully off before we go home, okay?”

“Okay,” she says.  They don’t really talk while they’re driving.  Usually Dana would ask her about what books she got at the library.  Today she doesn’t.

When they get to Dana’s apartment building, Fox stops the car.  “Do you want me to come up with you?” he asks.

“No,” Dana says.  “No, that’s okay.  You’ve got to take Samantha home.”

“Oh, we’re not in a hurry,” he says.  “Are we, Samantha?”  She shakes her head.

“Well, you still don’t have to come up,” Dana says.  “Don’t be silly.”

Fox is quiet for a minute, and Dana starts to open the car door; he puts out a hand to stop her.  “I think you know I’m not being silly,” he says.  “I just want to make sure you get up there all right.  That you’re all right.”

“I’m fine,” Dana says.  “Thanks for the ride, Mulder.  I’ll see you tomorrow.”

“You don’t—”

“I’ll see you tomorrow,” Dana repeats.  “Bye, Samantha.  Have a good night.” 

“I hope you can too,” Samantha says.  She doesn’t think Dana looks like she’s going to have a good night, or sounds like it.  But, she’s been learning recently, you aren’t supposed to tell people that kind of thing.

“Bye, Mulder,” Dana says, and he doesn’t stop her from opening the car door this time, only sighs and says goodbye.  They stay in the parking lot and watch her until she gets into the building.  Then they drive away.

“What’s wrong with Dana?” she asks.

“She’s sick, Sam,” Fox tells her.  “We talked about it, remember?”

“I remember,” Samantha says.  “But she was sick before today.  And today she was different.”

He sighs again, glancing at her in the rearview mirror.  “You’re too sharp, Sam,” he says.

“I don’t know what that means,” she says.

“It means you pick up on everything,” he tells her, “even when it’s something that… something that’s not so easy to talk about.”

“Okay,” she says.  “We don’t have to talk about it.”

“No,” he says.  “It’s all right.  It’s…Scully’s not doing as well as we’d like her to be, Sam.  And sometimes she doesn’t feel well when we’re working.  And that’s hard for her, because she wants to be able to work.  Do you understand?”

“I think so,” Samantha says.  “Is that why you came back early?  Because she wasn’t feeling well?”

He smiles at her, a little.  “Like I said,” he tells her, “too sharp.”  She’s not sure, from the way he says it, if being too sharp is a good thing or a bad thing.  Since he’s smiling she guesses it can’t be too bad.

“I’m sorry she’s still sick,” she says.

“Me too, Sam,” he says, and his voice sounds sad.  “Me too.”

“But she will get better?” she asks.  Back on the farm, if someone got sick, usually they just weren’t there the next day.  But here it seems like they always get better: Mom, when Samantha first came here, and everyone in her class who got the stomach bug, and Fox that time he had a cold.  So she thinks Dana will get better too, although it’s taking a long time.

Fox is quiet for a minute, and then he says, “Yes, of course,” and she’s glad.  But she’s sorry too, because Dana’s not better yet, and because Fox still seems sad about it.

She does her homework when they get back to the house, and then she makes dinner with Mom—they make pasta with garlic and parsley, from one of her cookbooks—and after dinner she goes up to her room to read.  She takes her library books out of her backpack and opens _The Comfort Cookbook_ to the page that she marked.  She looks at the recipe again, the No-Fail Chicken Soup.

 

They keep a shopping list in the kitchen drawer, and Samantha adds everything that she needs for the chicken soup to it, the next morning: a whole chicken to boil down, the vegetables, the noodles.  (The cookbook gave a couple of different choices for what to put in the soup, but she thought noodles would be the nicest.  They’re just about the easiest thing in the world to eat.)  Mom looks over her shoulder when she’s writing.  “What are you going to make, Samantha?” she asks.

“No-Fail Chicken Soup,” Samantha says.  “It’s from the cookbook I got at the library.  It’s straightforward and delightful.”

Mom smiles at her.  “Well, that sounds very nice,” she says.  “I can’t wait to taste it.”  She could let Mom taste a little bit, she guesses.

It’s Thursday today, and they usually do the grocery shopping on Saturday, so there’s not too long to wait until she can get the ingredients, which is a very good thing.  They go to the store in the late morning, and after lunch she starts making the soup.  The chicken has to boil for a long time, but Samantha gets it set up and then sits in a chair next to the stove, so she can work on her math homework but still keep an eye on it.  It’s very important to keep an eye on the food at all times, so it doesn’t get ruined; that’s one thing they talk about a lot, in cookbooks, along with not modifying the proportions when you’re baking and using the very freshest ingredients.  And she definitely doesn’t want the soup to get ruined.  She doesn’t know if it will still work, if she doesn’t follow the recipe perfectly. 

She strains the broth, when it’s done, and she cuts little pieces off the chicken to go back into the soup, along with the vegetables and the noodles.  She wants everything to be very soft and tender. 

When it’s done, she tastes it, just a little spoonful.  She tries to figure out if she’s feeling better.  It’s hard to say, because she wasn’t feeling bad before she tasted the soup, and anyway it might take more than a spoonful for it to work.  But it tastes good, anyway, and it’s nice and warm.  There’s a lot of it, and she fills three whole containers.  That’s a good thing, though, she thinks.  She puts them all into the big tote bag, the one they use when they go grocery shopping, and then she slings it over her shoulder.  It’s heavy, but she can manage it, and she carries it with her as she goes to find Fox.

He’s working on something on his computer, but he doesn’t have the door all the way closed, and he looks up and smiles at her when she taps.  “Hey, Sam,” he says.  “Are you done cooking?  It smells really good.”

She nods.  “Can we go over to Dana’s?”

He looks confused.  “Right now?” he asks, and when she nods again he says, “I’m not sure, Sam.  Not that Scully doesn’t love to see you,” he adds, “but she’s been very tired.  So I don’t know if we should—”

“That’s why we need to go over,” Samantha says.  “I made the soup for her.”  She shows him the three containers, tucked into her bag.  “So she’ll feel better.”

He looks at the soup, but she guesses he doesn’t know what it does, because he looks very sad.  He looks sad a lot more than he did when she first came here, and she’s almost sure it’s because Dana is sick.  So she opens her mouth to tell him all about the soup, so he’ll be happy again, but then he says, “That was very sweet of you, Sam.  That was…very, very sweet.”  He stares at the soup for another minute, and then he shakes his head and says, “How about I give Scully a call, okay?  We’ll see if she feels like visitors.  And if she doesn’t, we can put this in the fridge and take it to her tomorrow or Monday.”

“Okay,” Samantha says.  He goes to pick up the phone, and she adds, “Make sure you tell her about the soup.”

“Of course I will,” he says.

“Tell her that it will cure her,” Samantha says. 

He stops, with his hand on the phone, and looks at her.  “Samantha,” he says, “you know that soup…it’s a really nice thing to have when you’re sick, and I’m sure Scully will love it, but it doesn’t cure you.  You know that, right?”

“I guess most soup doesn’t cure you,” Samantha says.  “But this soup does.”

“Soup’s not like medicine,” Fox tells her.  “It can make you feel better.  But it can’t make you actually better.”

“This soup can,” Samantha says.

“Samantha,” he says, and he still doesn’t believe her, she can tell from his voice.  “I know you want to help, but—”

“This soup cures people,” she tells him.  “Here, I’ll show you.”  And she goes back to the kitchen, and she gets _The Comfort Cookbook_ and brings it back to him.  She opens it to the recipe and points.  “See,” she says.  “ _A soup that cures whatever ails you.  No matter how sick you’re feeling._ It will make her better.”

He looks at the cookbook, where she’s pointing, and he looks at her again, and now he looks even more sad than before.  “Oh, Sam,” he says.  “Let’s…we should talk, okay?  Let’s go sit on the couch.”  So they do.  She’s still carrying the cookbook and her bag of soup.  “Sam,” he asks her when they sit down, “do you know what hyperbole is?”  She shakes her head.  She guesses it’s something bad, though, from the way he’s talking, from the way he wasn’t happy when she showed him what the book said about the soup.  “Well, it’s like exaggeration,” he says.  “It’s when you say something that’s a lot more extreme than what’s really true.  Like the other night, when I said I could eat twenty brownies.  We all know I couldn’t really eat that many.  But I meant it to show that I really liked the brownies.  Does that make sense?”

“I think so,” she says.  She didn’t know, until now, that he didn’t really mean it when he said he could eat all those brownies.

“So that’s what the book is doing,” he tells her.  “When the writer says that the soup can cure whatever ails you, that’s hyperbole.  She means that the soup will make you feel a lot better if you’re sick.  Especially if you have…if whatever you have is not too serious.  Like a cold or a stomachache.  But she doesn’t mean that it will actually cure you.”

He can’t be right, he can’t be.  “Cookbooks are nonfiction,” she tells him.  “That means what they say has to be true.  You can’t make up something about soup and put it in a cookbook.”

“Cookbooks are nonfiction because they’re not stories,” he tells her.  “Because they give you the instructions for how to make things.  That doesn’t mean—it’s not true about the soup.  It won’t cure you.”

“So it’s a lie,” Samantha says.  “She put a lie in the cookbook.”  Now she feels sick herself.  She can’t believe someone would do that, write a lie like that.

“It’s not exactly a lie,” Fox says.  “When she wrote it, she meant—she expected everyone who’s reading it to know that it’s not entirely true.  Like when we read _A Wrinkle in Time_ , we know that it never—”

“But _A Wrinkle in Time_ is fiction,” she says.  What he’s saying doesn’t make any sense.  “So that’s different.  How could she think we’d know it wasn’t true about the soup?  I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t, Sam,” he says.  He puts a hand on her head, like he sometimes does.  “But most people would.  You’d know too if you’d…if you’d had more experience with soup.”

Well, she’s had experience with it now.  A bad experience.  She trusts Fox—he’s her brother, after all—and he wouldn’t tell her something that was all wrong, even if the woman who wrote the cookbook would.  But it’s hard to think about what that means.  “So the soup won’t help Dana,” she says.  “Not at all.”

“I didn’t say that, exactly.”  He puts an arm around her shoulders, gently.  “When you’re sick like Scully’s sick, it’s good to have foods that are easy to eat.  Easy on your stomach.  And soup is like that, so that will be a really good thing for her.  And it’s great that you made so much, so she won’t have to worry about cooking.  You did something really nice, Sam.  Even if it won’t cure her, that doesn’t mean it won’t help at all.”  But he still looks sad, and Samantha feels sad too.

“I know,” she says.  “But…I wanted her to get better right away.  And now it will take longer.”  He doesn’t say anything.  “How long will it take, now?” she asks, and he still doesn’t say anything.  “You said she would get better,” she reminds him.  “When?”

“Sam,” he says; his voice is quiet, and she doesn’t like how it sounds.  “I don’t know exactly what will happen.  Scully is strong, and she has good doctors, and we all hope she’ll get better really soon.  But we don’t know exactly when that will be.  When or…”  He stops talking then, even though he didn’t finish his sentence.

“When or what?” she asks him.

He’s not even really looking at her when he talks again.  “We don’t know for sure if she will.  Get better.”

Samantha feels cold.  “You said she would,” she says.  “You said of course she would.”  And she’d just been thinking that he wouldn’t lie to her.  Maybe everyone lies to her.  People never used to lie to her and now everyone does, and that makes her feel sick too, almost as sick as she feels when she thinks about what he said, that Dana might not get better at all, that she might just disappear one day, like everyone used to back at the farm.  She tries to talk again, but it’s hard to say the words; talking is usually easy for her now, but suddenly it’s hard again, because she feels so sick.  “Lie,” she manages to get out.  “You lie.”

He’s looking at her now, and he looks even sadder than he did before.  She didn’t know anyone could look this sad.  “I’m so sorry, Samantha,” he says.  “You’re right—I wasn’t honest with you.  And I should have been.  All I can say is that I didn’t mean to lie.  I just said…I said what I wanted to be true.”

She can’t ask all of her questions.  “Why?”

“Because it’s…because it’s very hard,” he says.  “To talk about.  Or even to think about.”

“If she doesn’t get better, she’ll disappear?” Samantha asks. 

“Disappear?” Fox asks.  “What do you mean?”

“Before,” Samantha says.  “If someone was sick.  They would be gone the next day.  Just gone.”  She thinks about Dana, teaching her hopscotch, coming over for dinner, always asking her about her books.  “I don’t want Dana to be gone like that.”

“Oh God,” he says, and he hugs her now.  “She wouldn’t be gone just like that,” he says.  “You don’t have to worry about that, Sam.  People don’t disappear like that here.  If she doesn’t get better, we’d…”  It seems like he’s having trouble talking too.  “We’d get to say goodbye,” he says, and then he’s crying.  Sometimes she doesn’t know why people are crying, if they’re happy or sad, but she knows now.  He’s very sad.  And that makes her more sad.  The only thing she wanted to do was help and now she can’t even do that.  So she cries too, and he keeps crying, and they hug each other tight.

“I don’t like this,” Samantha says finally.  She takes a tissue from the box on the table and wipes her eyes.  She gives one to Fox, too.

 “I don’t like it either, Sam,” he tells her.  “Not at all.”  He takes the tissue and blows his nose.  “We can still be hopeful, though,” he says.  “And we can do nice things for Scully.  Like bringing her the soup you made.”

“And she still could get better,” Samantha says.  “Right?”

“Of course,” Fox says.  “Of course she could.”

That’s what he said before, though: _of course_.  “True?” she asks him.

“Yes,” he says.  “Yes, Samantha, that’s true.”

 

Samantha carries the soup when they go over to Dana’s.  She doesn’t feel as good about it as she did, but she doesn’t think it can be helped.

Dana opens the door.  “Hi, Mulder,” she says.  “Hi, Samantha.  Mulder says you made something for me?”  She’s smiling, but her voice sounds tired, still.

“Yes,” Samantha says.  “I made chicken soup.”  She doesn’t tell Dana that it will help her feel better, because she’s not sure about that now, and she doesn’t want to be someone who tells lies.

Dana looks into the bag.  “That looks so nice,” she says.  “Thank you, Samantha.  I’d love to try some.”

They heat some of the soup up, in a pot on the stove.  “You have to keep an eye on it while it’s cooking,” Samantha tells Dana.  “So it doesn’t get ruined.”

“Samantha, I think Scully knows how—” Fox starts to say, but Dana laughs.

“No, it’s good advice, Mulder,” she says.  “Thanks for cluing me in, Samantha.”  She goes over to her cabinets and takes out three bowls and three spoons.

“The soup is for you,” Samantha says.  “I made it for you.”

“I know,” Dana says.  “But there’s enough for all of us to have some.  And you’re my guests, so I want you to eat with me.”  Maybe Dana can tell that Samantha’s not so sure about that; she says, “That always makes it nicer, I think.  Eating with someone else.”

So when the soup is ready they put it into the three bowls, and they take the bowls and spoons over to the table.  Samantha watches Dana, as she takes her spoon and has a sip.  “Mmm,” she says.  “This is delicious.”

Fox has a sip too.  “Yeah, Samantha.  It’s really good.”

So Samantha eats the soup too—it does taste good, even if it doesn’t do everything she thought it could.  And she watches Dana.  Dana’s eating slowly, just little sips at a time.  Sometimes she puts her spoon down.  When she sees Samantha watching her, she touches Samantha’s hand and says, “Thank you so much for making this for me,” but her hand feels cold.

But she keeps eating the soup, and Samantha keeps watching.   


End file.
